Tansy clasped a thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose and shook her head in frustration. “Lordy, lordy, lordy, I’ll get nothin’ done for watchin’ after you, I can see that!”

Incensed, Maggie got off the berth and ferreted beneath it for her carpetbag. Once she’d found that, she made busy work of arranging and rearranging its meager contents, careful not to speak to Tansy Quinn or even to look at her.

Just after midnight the Victoria docked in Sydney Harbor.

Tired and unable to see much in the dense darkness, the one hundred-odd emigrant women left the ship by one ramp while the first-class passengers disembarked via another. Laughter and warm greetings wafted over the dark water, deepening the loneliness of those who had no one to greet them.

For this reason the band of women stayed close together as John Higgins, holding a lamp high above his head, led them into a long, shedlike building, where more lamps shone.

Maggie saw what seemed to be dried seaweed piled up against the walls in heaps and, out of the corner of one eye, a rat skittering across the bare plank floors. There was no furniture, no food, no one to offer a warm welcome.

“Looks like we’ll all be piggin’ in ’ere together!” Tansy sang out in cheerful tones.

There was a stunned silence at this, Maggie being no more vocal in the face of such a prospect than the other women.

Tansy surveyed her audience with exasperated affection. “Now, don’t be lookin’ so woebegone, all of you—there’ll be wagons come for us in the mornin’, bright and early.”

Maggie was thinking of what Mr. McKenna had told her in his cabin: that she was to come to Number 15 George Street as soon as the ship docked in Sydney. Given the late hour, the prospect was hardly appealing, but it beat “pigging in” on a bed of scratchy seaweed, with rats for company.

Always one to act on a thought in virtually the same moment it surfaced, Maggie bounded out of the shed on the landward side and along a dimly lighted wooden walkway to the place where the first-class passengers were being helped into sleek buggies and carriages.

In the light of gas-powered streetlights, Maggie searched for Reeve McKenna, having long since given up on the idea that Philip would be waiting here for her, eager to whisk her away to a place where one could have a bath and a clean bed to sleep in. Intuitively, she knew that Tansy had been right about Mr. Briggs, indeed, that Mr. McKenna had spoken the truth concerning him as well. She wondered that her heart had not broken under the knowledge.

There were a good many people milling about in the golden glow of the street lanterns, and it was some time before Maggie spotted Mr. McKenna. When she did, she almost turned away.